New from Cambridge University Press!

Sociolinguistics from the Periphery "presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users."

This book is a collection of seven original contributions(plus an introduction by the editor) targeting graduatestudents of linguistics as well as professionalsyntacticians and semanticists. The eight chapters are asfollows (contributors in parentheses): Introduction (P.Svenonius), The 'Que/Qui' Alternation and the Distributionof Expletives (K. T. Taraldsen), Icelandic ExpletiveConstructions and the Distribution of Subject Types (O. Vangsnes), Expletives, Subjects, and Topics in Finnish (A. Holmberg & U. Nikanne), The EPP in a Topic-ProminentLanguage (K. ��. Kiss), The Extended Projection Principle asa Condition on the Tense Dependency (I. Roberts & A.Roussou), Parameters of Subject Inflection in ItalianDialects (M. R. Manzini & L. Savoia), Subject Positions andthe Placement of Adverbials (P. Svenonius).

The Introduction (Svenonius) looks at the issues pertainingto the notion of "subject" and its multi-faceted character;it then turns to the existence of expletive subjects,popularised through the study of English 'there' and 'it'in generative grammar; it continues with a discussion ofthe status of the Extended Projection Principle (EPP),namely the requirement that all clauses have a subject. Apresentation of the individual papers in the volumeconcludes the chapter.

Taraldsen's "The 'Que/Qui' Alternation and theDistribution of Expletives" compares French with Vallader(a Rhaeto-Romance variety) and suggests that the 'que/qui'alternation (see (1) below) in the former boils down to thepresence versus absence of an expletive subject 'i', alsomanifested as 'ti' in Colloquial French in cases like theone in (2):

By looking into the distribution of '(t)i', Taraldsenconcludes that it is a numberless, genderless expletive,hence a "pure expletive" like English 'there'. This lastpostulation is examined in the face of French StylisticInversion, where '(t)i' does not show up attached on 'que'.

Vangsnes' chapter looks into Icelandic Transitive ExpletiveConstructions, such as the sentence in (3) below:

(3) ��a�� hefur (einhver k��ttur) veri�� (einhver k��ttur) �� eldh��sinu there has (some cat) been (some cat) in kitchen.the "There has been some cat in the kitchen."

The expression "some cat", called the associate, can appeareither in an "intermediate" position between the auxiliary'has' and the verb, or in a "postverbal" position,following both. Vangsnes examines in detail the type ofassociates that can appear in each position. He establishesthat, in Icelandic Transitive Expletive Constructions,partitive and universally quantified expressions onlyappear in the intermediate position, identified as thespecifier of the Tense Phrase (SpecTP), whereas non-quantificational bare indefinites obligatorily occupy thepostverbal position. Indefinites, such as "some cat" in(3), can appear in either position, despite displaying"Diesing effects": when in the intermediate position, theyreceive a presupposition reading. Vangsnes goes on toaccount for the facts by capitalising on (a) de Hoop's(1996) notion of strong and weak Case: Tense can licensestrong Case, hence taking quantified expressions in itsspecifier; (b) a distinction between "lexical" and"agreement" features, as well as the need for functionalcategories to be identified: this is why the expletive'��a��', conceived as deictic, appears in the specifier ofthe highest Agreement Projection (AgrP).

Holmberg and Nikanne explore subjecthood in Finnish, alanguage that can front subjects as well as objects.Moreover, Finnish permits expletives as well as TransitiveExpletive Constructions. What Holmberg and Nikanne arguefor is that in Finnish the presupposed argument, the topic(which is marked with a [-focus] feature), must beexternalised and move to the specifier of a FinitenessPhrase (SpecFP), no matter whether it is a subject or anobject. Finiteness is taken to subsume the categoryAgreement and differences between fronted subjects andfronted objects are claimed to boil down to the fact thatAgreement is inherently nominative. Finally, the chaptershows that the Finnish expletive subject 'sita' alsooccupies the SpecFP position.

In a similar vein, E. Kiss draws on evidence primarily fromHungarian to reformulate EPP along the followingprinciples (her (30), (31) and (40)):

(4) Statements express predication, or quantification, or both.(5) A sentence expressing predication must contain a topic.(6) Of the arguments of a predicate, one must be markedas a subject.

Fronted arguments occupy the specifier of a Topic Phrase(SpecTopP). English observes (6) in the form of the subjectmoving to SpecTP, which then moves to SpecTopP abiding by(5), whereas Hungarian does so by marking an argument assubject in the lexicon. Because SpecTP is irrelevant inHungarian, the language lacks grammatical function changingoperations, such as passivisation, 'tough'-movement,syntactic secondary predication and syntactic middles.

Roberts and Roussou propose a unification of the EPP withthe typically Germanic Verb-Second (V2) property. In theirchapter they advance a proposal whereby Complementiser andTense constitute a dependency from which the time of theevent the clause denotes is defined. In this dependency,functional heads must be identified (by phonologicalmaterial, whether a phrase or a head). Roughly, if thishead is Tense, then we derive a condition such as the EPPin both null and non-null subject languages; if this headis C, then V2 is also derived. As far as V2 is concerned,Roberts and Roussou argue against the relevance of topicfeatures being checked at C and propose that, while theverb is in C to identify the C-T dependency, a full phraseis also needed in V2 environments in order to type theclause as a declarative, in the absence of any "rich"content of C.

Manzini and Savoia use evidence from Italian dialects toillustrate the need for multiple Agreement projections, aswell as the need to eliminate pro and A-movement, in favourof the movement of aspectual / thematic features from theverbal domain to base-generated subjects (and otherarguments) higher up in the clause, or to the heads theyare attached to. Furthermore, expletive-associate anddoubling constructions are unified as instances of movementof aspectual / thematic features; non-agreeing or partlyagreeing associates are subsequently explored in the lightof the above hypotheses. Interestingly, the chapter doesnot restrict itself to describing Italian dialects butmoves on to hypothesise universal characteristics ofsubjects and expletive-associate configurations, providingevidence for a microparametric conception of syntacticvariation.

The last chapter, by the editor himself, is roughly dividedin two parts. In the first one, the question of theposition of adverbs is discussed. The author argues againstthe influential model of Cinque (1999), where each adverbis in the specifier of a dedicated functional head. Heargues instead that ordering restrictions between subjectsand adverbs in Scandinavian and Italian can be betterexplained if adverbs are adjuncts with their relativeorderings constrained by semantics. In the second part,Svenonius looks into subject positions in Germanic. Afterreviewing the different behaviour of the high position (thespecifier of AgrP, SpecAgrP) and the lower one (SpecTP) inGermanic varieties, he analyses the observed variationalong the following lines: the highest specifiers in V2constructions preferentially host shift topics; the lowerSpecAgrP hosts continuous topics and the lowest SpecTPpractically everything else. Now, languages like Danish andEnglish mark all their subjects as topics by default, hencethey all land in SpecAgrP, in Swedish only non-focusedsubjects are marked as topics (hence focused Swedishsubjects remain in SpecTP), German and Norwegian only markreal continued topics as such, shift topics move higher andeverything else remains in SpecTP.

EVALUATION

The issues this volume is dealing with have received agreat deal of attention and have raised considerablecontroversy over the last twenty years. One then has toimmediately grant that putting together a volume dealingwith the life of (obligatory) subjects, their position(s)and the nature and behaviour of expletives can be neitherconclusive nor, certainly, exhaustive. That much becomesevident from the Introduction Svenonius has written for thevolume. The Introduction is an outstandingly clear andsuccinctly informative review on what subjects are (not):topics, nominative phrases and/or thematically prominentarguments. Similar praise must go to the rest of theIntroduction, where expletives and EPP are briefly butsolidly introduced. Before moving on, it should be notedthat this introductory chapter makes a more than adequatesummary of the related issues, well beyond the scope of thevolume, as well, and it would also make a good preparatorytext to give to advanced undergraduates.

Before proceeding to assess chapters individually, I wouldlike to raise issues pertaining to the editing of thevolume. Researchers and scholars are not editors and shouldnot be expected to substitute for them: it is not only amatter of time or workload but also, simply, of training.Nevertheless, even international publishers such as OxfordUniversity Press, who publish this volume, assume that, atleast in our field, we can also act as unassisted editors --and save them money (although, thankfully, editors arestill used for their journals). This certainly createsproblems and slows jointly authored volume projects down.Some of the errors in the volume, and I am not even aneditor, include: Elena Anagnostopoulou's surname misspelled(as "Anagnastopoulou") on pp. 11, 12, 44 and 58; "examing"instead of "examining" on p. 17; references to examples (5)and (6) appearing as (6) and (7) on p. 109 and Bobaljik &Thrainsson (1998) referenced as a (1997) manuscript onp.239. Publishers of joint volumes should put the hand deepin their pockets and reconsider. To the chapters, now.

Taraldsen's chapter is dealing with a very specific issue,the nature of the 'que/qui' alteration and its relation toFrench Stylistic Inversion. The discussion is too condensedand would have definitely benefited from some unpacking, assometimes the text verges on obscurity. For instance, on p.37 the functional head F is introduced, along with afunctional head F' (which further down is identified with ahead X: F' does not stand for an intermediate projection).Towards the end of the same page we read: "a finite clausecontains two functional heads, I and F, associated with EPPfeatures [��^����] Similarly, two distinct functional heads, Iand X, carry number features." On the next page we learnthat X (i.e. F') can be identified with AgrO but noindication of the identity of F is given. This and similarproblems in presentation make the argument very tricky tofollow.

In Vangsnes' chapter we are presented across eleven pages(pp. 43-54) with a detailed description of the twopositions an associate can occupy in Icelandic TransitiveExpletive Constructions, as well as with thecharacteristics of each position. The exposition is clearand, in parts, very useful (e.g. the table on p. 52). Onereservation here would perhaps be that such a detaileddescriptive presentation would be more in place in ahandbook rather than a collection of primary researchpapers, as this volume is. The analysis builds on Case (seeabove) but the discussion tends to be very telegraphic inparts, such as the point on p. 56, where the relationbetween tense and subjective Case is (too briefly)presented, or the original distinction on p. 61 betweenlexical and agreement features, where the two classes arenot adequately defined: this mars the clarity of theanalysis on pp. 61-64. While on the issue, this verydistinction itself appears to be problematic: a) It is notclear why [Case], [deixis], and [tense] are lexicalfeatures whereas [person] and [number] are agreementfeatures (p. 61). For instance, on what grounds is [deixis]taken to be a lexical feature and [person] an agreementone? There is actually research that the two belong to thesame (class of) feature: Bloomfield (1938: 225-6), Ritter(1995: 421), Panagiotidis (2002: 29) etc. consider also thewell-known fact that demonstrative systems tend to "shadow"the tripartition between "speaker", "addressee" and"other"; b) there is nothing by way of explanation of why[Case], [deixis], and [person] are all significant inidentifying the Complementiser field, and no reference isprovided either. As a consequence, the linking of thesehypotheses to the distinction between strong and weak Caseas well as the relevance of topic-hood (cf. p.62) are leftdangling. Leaving these points behind, a more generalobservation here would be that the paper is lucid andinformative in its descriptive part but tends to becomeimpenetrable and contorted in parts of its analysis.

Holmberg and Nikanne present their case with clarity andprecision. The chapter contains a brief yet informativeintroduction to the relevant aspects of Finnish syntax; theauthors also provide us with their assumed basic clausestructure for the language in the form of a tree-diagram,which is a most welcome aid. Their claim that SpecFP is thelanding site for any [-Focus] argument is supported via adetailed survey of the relevant structures; if the chapterstopped here, we would be left with the conclusion thatFinnish is a topic-prominent language. Nevertheless, theirsection 5 (pp. 86-9) truly deepens their analysis as itcontrasts the interaction between the above property withthe inherently nominative specification of F/Agr, hencederiving the intriguing fact that fronted objects behave asif they head a quasi-A' chain. The treatment of the Finnishexpletive and that of Finnish Transitive ExpletiveConstructions are also enlightening. One objection mustnevertheless be made before closing this short evaluationof Holmberg and Nikanne's chapter: it should have featureda conclusion rounding up the discussion and tying thevarious threads together, for instance the analysis ofTransitive Expletive Constructions with that on "weather"subjects in Finnish.

��. Kiss puts forward a recasting of the EPP along the linesof (4), (5) and (6) above, reducing it to semanticrestrictions on predication. The argumentation is coherentand the ensuing proposal is certainly interesting. Ofcourse this is done at a cost: in eventive sentences suchas (7) below (example (18c) in the chapter), we are forcedto postulate an empty event argument as the filler ofSpecTopP:

While there is considerable support for event arguments,especially in the more semantically-minded part ofsyntactic literature, the question here is whether there isany independent (cross-linguistic) evidence for it; inother words, are there any overt event arguments (cross-linguistically)? This question is important whenforegrounded against the discussion of English expletives'there' and 'it': the former is understood in this chapterto be an element that turns the verb of the clause into anexistential quantifier, hence a restrictor, that becomesvisible purely for Case reasons, hence it is not a "pureexpletive"; the latter is seen as forming a discontinuousunit with the clause, in cases such as the following:

(8) It is believed / obvious [that ...]

No mention of the weather function of 'it' is made ('It issnowing'). In other words, the analysis works at the costof a null eventive argument and reinterpreting the role ofEnglish expletive subjects, which are the best-studiedones. More generally, it remains for the theory ��. Kissputs forward in this chapter to be tested against a largernumber of languages, other than English and Hungarian,where it is not clear that topic-prominence entails theabsence of TP, as is claimed to be the case in Hungarian(see above in the "Description" section): Finnish, asanalysed by Holmberg & Nikanne, or Greek (which appears tobe midway between English and Hungarian) would be some ofthe more accessible candidates for testing.

Roberts & Roussou present a very dense and very richchapter that is nevertheless reader-friendly, as itcontains a number of summaries and mnemonic aids such asthe spelling out of the main hypotheses and generalisationsas numbered items. The hypothesis itself is veryintriguing: instead of the interaction betweeninterpretable and uninterpretable features, grammaticaloperations are taken to be driven by the need of featuresand bundles thereof (i.e. functional heads) to be madevisible / identified. Roberts and Roussou look into thenature of the Complementiser (field) in some detail, whichis certainly something that helps lend considerablecredibility to their account; moreover, their criticism of"Topic-Criterion" style analyses for V2 strikes a chordwith work asserting the non-quantificational character oftopic, such as Rizzi (1997), for instance. Because theyanalyse the fronted phrase in V2 as identifying the defaultdeclarative function of C, they can accommodate otherwiseawkward cases of German V1 (p.139), like 'yes/no' questionsand conditionals. Their brief excursus into Celtic remainsto be expanded elsewhere.

Manzini & Savoia survey a large number of Italian dialects,which display a considerable degree of variation, in orderto advance their hypothesis on the number and the nature ofthe four "Agreement" projections where subject clitics andfull subjects attach: Determiner, Number, Nominal andPerson. Building on their previous work, they elaborate ontheir elimination of 'pro' and its paradoxical need forsyntactic licensing and identification conditions becauseof its PF status; this is indeed a most welcome step. Onpp.167-170 they argue that in null subject languagespreverbal lexical subjects are not really subjects buttopics, whereas post-verbal subjects are foci. Althoughthere is a problem with the second part of this hypothesisfor null subject languages beyond Italian, I will restrictmyself to pointing out that an analysis of preverbalsubjects as topics in null subject languages typicallyencounters problems with Exceptional Case Marking, forinstance in Greek where preverbal subjects can beexceptionally assigned accusative from the higher verb,something very odd if they are pure topics in A' positions:

Manzini and Savoia's postulation of four positionsavailable for subject clitics is convincingly presented,although the exact characterisation of Nominal and Personis certainly going to benefit from further research.

The final chapter by Svenonius himself does an excellentjob refuting Cinque's account of the positioning ofadverbs. He is right in showing that, given that subjectscan surface between almost any two higher adverbs, thenumber of optional subject positions is multiplied beyondnecessity (twenty in Norwegian, fifteen in Italian: p.208);the following Norwegian example (his (15)) partlyillustrates this state of affairs:

(10) at tydeligvis (Per) ikke (Per) lenger (Per) bestandig (Per) vinner that evidently Per not Per anymore Per always Per wins "that evidently Per not anymore always wins."

He defends the adjunction analysis, coupling it withsemantic restrictions on the co-occurrence of certainadverbs. Nevertheless, this is not the topic of the volumein question. That is why he goes on to survey Germanicsubjects (see the "Description" section above). However,when it is time, in section 5, to bring these two threadstogether, the result is nowhere as clear as the discussionon the adjunction site of adverbs. The fact that he invokeschecking of topic features as one of the mechanisms at playand that he in effect collapses a Topic projection withAgreement (only to return to a unitary head Inflection onp.233) certainly does not improve matters. This chapterdoes make it clear that the proposals in Bobaljik & Jonas(1996) and Bobaljik & Thrainsson (1998) regarding thenumber of inflectional heads in Germanic varieties aremaybe too coarse-grained and do not properly account forthe interaction between subjects and adverbs in a clearway. At the same time, Svenonius' counter-proposal is notalways clear and, in the case of topic-hood, probably notfully on the right track.

Finishing the volume I was left with the feeling that thecontributions, although interesting in their majority, werenot always one hundred percent in concord with the subjectof "Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP". In other words, thescope of the title (as well as the Introduction) turned outto be much wider than that of the chapters: their number istoo small, some of them deal with details not necessarilycontributing to our understanding of the broader picture,the comparative-typological side of the individual chapterstends to remain underdeveloped. In other words, the endresult gives the impression of an uneven collection ofcontributions, as far as their presentation, scope andrigour are concerned.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I wish to warmly thank Kleanthes K. Grohmann and Stavroula Tsiplakou for discussing this review with me. The usual disclaimers apply.

Phoevos Panagiotidis is an Assistant Professor ofLinguistics in Cyprus College, Cyprus. He is the author ofthe monograph titled "Pronouns, Clitics and Empty Nouns"(2002: Benjamins). He has also published articles ininternational journals (Lingua, NLLT, Linguistic Inquiry)and jointly authored volumes on pronouns, properties ofDeterminer Phrases and the status of arguments in nullsubject languages. Besides the above, his researchinterests include the nature of grammatical categories,language acquisition and breakdown, as well as thestructure of English, Greek and the languages of the BalkanSprachbund.